


Life After Death

by ligeia



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Medical, Childhood Friends, Eventual Smut, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-08 06:16:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21471403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ligeia/pseuds/ligeia
Summary: Two childhood friends reconnect as adults, but neither are who they used to be. Very loosely based offthis promptbymotteme, who has kindly allowed me to borrow it.
Relationships: Choi Seunghyun | T.O.P./Kwon Jiyong | G-Dragon
Comments: 13
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my own amusement, but since GTOP is kind of a rarepair these days I felt it wouldn't hurt to share. I edit as I write, so previously posted chapters will continue to be edited (sorry).
> 
> Please be assured that although there will be eventual explicit content, none of it involves either of the characters when they were underage.
> 
> I have no beta. In place of any South Korea-specific knowledge of their hospitals and medical residency process, I have substituted my own experience (sorry again).

Youngbae waits in the emergency room for an hour before he scrolls through his contacts, mentally crosses off his parents and Hyorin, and calls Jiyong. The phone rings three times and for a moment, he thinks he’s going to voicemail. When Jiyong does pick up, there’s no voice on the other end, just a clamor of many different conversations shouted above thumping, bass-heavy EDM.

“Hello?” Youngbae ventures.

“Just—give me a second, would you—hang on—” comes Jiyong’s decibel-shattering voice, shouting into the receiver. 

“Fuck!” Youngbae jerks back and accidentally drops his phone, which hits the stretcher and slides onto the floor.

Jiyong’s still shouting into the phone when Youngbae manages to awkwardly lean over the railing of the stretcher and pick it up again. “Youngbae? Are you there? What’s up?”

“Jeez, Jiyong, were you trying to make me deaf?”

“Hang on, I can’t hear you—give me a sec,” Jiyong yells back. “Shoo. I’m coming back, I promise. Hey, I see you trying to take my seat! That lap is mine!” 

Youngbae waits patiently as Jiyong narrates his exit from wherever the fuck he is. Finally, silence engulfs the other end of the line. 

“Hello? Are you still there?” Jiyong asks. 

“Did I interrupt something?”

“Yea, I’m at a club. What’s up?”

“Oh. I’ll try someone else. I didn’t think you had plans tonight. Wait, don’t you have work tomorrow morning?”

“Did you call me just to nag?” Jiyong asks, in such a tone that Youngbae could already picture the exasperated smirk on his face. “Where are you, anyway? What’s all that beeping?”

“Well...I’m in the emergency room,” Youngbae says before carefully moving the phone away from his ear.

“You’re where?” Jiyong asks, voice rising into a shrill screech. “Are you okay? What hospital? I’m coming right now—”

“I’m fine, I just hurt myself in the kitchen earlier. I’m at Seoul National. They’re gonna stitch me up and send me home. Do you think you can come get me when they’re done? I didn’t want my parents or Hyorin to worry, so...”

“Holy shit. Of course. I’ll be right there.”

“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Of course I have, but I’m fucking sober now! I’m coming. You better not be lying, ‘Bae, because if you are and you’re dying, I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“Thanks, Ji. I really owe you one. Be careful if you’re driving.”

Jiyong’s already hung up, though, and Youngbae lies back down on the stretcher, grateful for both the effectiveness of IV morphine and for having a friend as reliable as Jiyong.

—

Youngbae is almost asleep when he hears a cry. Warm arms wrap around him. He blinks drowsily, expecting to see Jiyong, but instead there’s just a girl with her face buried in his shoulder. Her long, blonde hair slides off a delicate neck. A delicate, tattooed neck...

“...Ji?” 

“Oh my God, ‘Bae. I knew it. I’m going to fucking kill you,” Jiyong lifts his head off Youngbae’s shoulder, neatly manicured fingers rising to wipe tears off his heavily made up eyes. 

“It’s fine, it’s better than it looks,” Youngbae says absentmindedly, staring at Jiyong, at his makeup, and the skin-exposing ensemble he had on.

“You have a fucking knife sticking through your hand, Youngbae,” Jiyong says, pointing angrily at the injured hand Youngbae had resting on a mayo stand beside the stretcher.

“I know, I was just trying to pit this avocado.”

“I can see that. It’s still there, too, you idiot!” Jiyong cries, hugging Youngbae again tightly.

Youngbae looks around nervously. There’s a handful of ER staff and patients around them, some openly staring at the two of them, and some pointedly ignoring them.

“Ji, do you think you can get off of me? I don’t want them to kick you out. I need you to take me back home later,” Youngbae says with a smile.

“Fine. Besides, I just got this jacket and I don’t really want your blood on it,” Jiyong sniffs, checking the leather to make sure it wasn’t stained.

“What are you wearing, anyway? What club were you at when you picked up?”

“Um, I’m sorry,” a halting, hesitating voice interrupts. Youngbae and Jiyong turn simultaneously towards the speaker: the petite nurse taking care of him.

“Are you his nurse? Is he going to be okay?” Jiyong asks quickly, sitting upright with eyes intently focused on the woman.

“We’re just waiting for the orthopedic surgeon to come and evaluate his injury. It might be a little while longer...um, do you want to wait in the waiting room?”

“No, I want to wait here, with him. Why is it taking so long? So he needs surgery? Is the surgeon coming soon?” Jiyong demands.

“Wait, surgery?” Youngbae asks. He feels Jiyong’s grip tightening around his other hand.

“I’m sorry, did Dr. Yoon not tell you yet? Because of the risk of injury to your tendons and nerves, we’re getting a surgical consult.”

“Holy shit,” Youngbae says, falling back against the stretcher. The faint buzz of blood rushing dizzily to his head makes him close his eyes. The knife in his hand suddenly feels a little heavy, and his fingers twitch painfully.

“It’s ok,” he hears Jiyong say, hands soothing down his chest. “Do you think you can give him something for anxiety?”

“I can ask Dr. Yoon, but if they need him to sign anything first we might have to wait. Unless you’re his health care proxy and can consent to surgery for him...”

“I’m just a friend,” Jiyong says. “But if he has to wait, can’t he get something for the pain as well? I can see he’s in pain, and I’m not even a nurse.”

“It’s fine, Ji. I’m fine,” Youngbae interrupts. He glances placatingly at his nurse, who was smiling at Jiyong with what must’ve been every ounce of professional patience she had. “I can wait. I just didn’t think it would be this involved. You really don’t have to stay; I know you have work in the morning.”

Jiyong is quiet for a minute. “Alright, tough guy. Your call. But I’m staying put.”

Youngbae feels the thin mattress of the stretcher give way to the warm weight of Jiyong’s body curling up next to him. Then he closes his eyes again, and slowly falls asleep.

—

It was kind of amazing to Jiyong how Youngbae could sleep anywhere, even in the middle of a buzzing emergency room after stabbing himself with a 20 cm chef’s knife. Jiyong tries very hard to not look at it, because doing so makes his stomach somersault into his chest, so he scrolls through his phone until the batteries die. Then, because he doesn’t want to wake Youngbae up, he closes his eyes to get some rest as well. He kicks his heels off, snuggling closer to Youngbae on the narrow stretcher.

It was now well past midnight, and it looked like Jiyong was going to wait all night for the surgeon to descend from Mount Olympus and evaluate Youngbae’s injury. He should probably call his sister and tell her he couldn’t come in tomorrow to open her store...except he let his phone die scrolling through Instagram instead. Oh well.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting?” a deep voice asks above them. Jiyong startles, then looks up—straight into an oddly, achingly familiar face—and startles again. This time he jolts so hard he nearly knocks Youngbae off the stretcher, injured hand and all.

“Fuck!” Jiyong jumps out of the stretcher and grabs Youngbae’s free hand. “Are you okay?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man says, with a soft, heart-stopping smile on his face. 

Jiyong nods jerkily in response. His voice freezes in his throat so he just watches as the man quickly turns to Youngbae. He doesn’t know why the doctor shook him so much just now. He’s handsome, to be sure, but so much so that Jiyong’s confident he’d remember a face like that. 

Youngbae, meanwhile, blinks drowsily awake at the tall stranger now standing over him. He exchanges a perfunctory introduction with Youngbae that Jiyong doesn’t catch, and quickly sets to work. Jiyong steps aside and tries to avoid watching, the sight of Youngbae’s shish kebob’d hand making him queasy. 

The problem is, whenever he looks away, other people in the ER quickly turn their heads away as well. He has to remember to add an emergency change of clothes in the trunk of his car. It figured the one time Youngbae felt like cooking was also when Jiyong’s attending a drag party in Itaewon.

Every time Jiyong does sneak a glance at Youngbae and the surgeon, he finds his eyes going straight for the man’s angular face. It’s an easy thing to focus on while trying to avoid the sight of Youngbae’s hand. He has such striking movie star looks, it’s probably the only time Jiyong’s ever thought that becoming a doctor was a waste of a career choice. 

A grunt from Youngbae shakes Jiyong out of his reverie. When he glances over again, the surgeon is leaning over Youngbae. 

“Can you feel when I touch you here?”

Youngbae nods, eyes tightly squeezed together. 

“And I’m sorry, but can you push against me now?” The doctor holds his hand against Youngbae’s fingers. 

“Yea, it just kind of hurts,” Youngbae replies apologetically. 

Jiyong runs forward at the sight of Youngbae wincing in pain. “Hey! Can you be more careful?” 

The doctor turns, with a look in his eyes that is dark, confused, but still, above all, unnervingly familiar. The glint of the knife embedded in Youngbae’s palm catches Jiyong’s eye as he gets closer, his heart fluttering in his chest. And, oh—there’s a large pile of bloody bandages as well, how pleasant. A wave of vertigo crashes into him. 

When Jiyong opens his eyes again, the doctor’s calm, assessing face is right above him, along with that of half a dozen other people in scrubs. 

“Is he awake?” he hears Youngbae hurriedly ask. 

There’s a shuffling of movement close to him. Several people around him run off towards the direction of Youngbae’s voice. “Hey, stop! You need to get back in bed!”

“What happened?” Jiyong asks, sitting up. He looks around, but the people hovering over him are blocking his surroundings. He can tell, though, that he’s still in the same area Youngbae was assigned to. On top of that, he’s in a stretcher of his own now. This night is going so well.

“You fainted,” Youngbae’s nurse says. “You need to lie back down, because you might’ve hit your head.” She has some IV tubing in her hand, the other end of which is connected...to his arm. The lights of the room dance for a second.

“Whoa—you’re okay, miss,” the doctor says, grabbing Jiyong’s shoulders before he could hit the stretcher. There’s a pause, then the sound of an unsubtle kick. The doctor looks over at the nurse. “What?”

She just motions towards Jiyong with her eyes. The doctor looks down from Jiyong’s face to his chest. Jiyong realizes he’s no longer wearing his leather jacket, or for that matter, anything else above the waist. Realization dawns on the man’s face. 

“Oh. Oh,” he says, eyes wide. 

But that look—dark eyes blown wide in shock—Jiyong knows that look. Jiyong wraps his hand across the back of the doctor’s neck, examining him carefully. He resists as Jiyong draws him in close, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. People start pulling Jiyong back, but those brief expressions were enough. Jiyong beams, which only earns him more confused looks from everyone around him. He settles back in his stretcher, satisfied. It’s a wonder Jiyong didn’t recognize him from the beginning. 

“What did you say your name was again?” He asks, still smiling. Jiyong never thought he’d see him again, and for a moment he bathes in the ecstasy of discovery. 

“I’m...I’m Dr. Choi,” he answers, sounding almost uncertain of himself. 

“Choi Seunghyun?”

Seunghyun looks puzzled for a moment, then he fumbles around his neck and shows Jiyong the hospital ID on his lanyard. 

Choi Seunghyun, MD. PGY-3. Department of Surgery. 

Jiyong grabs it, perhaps a little too greedily, and stares at the tiny, faded portrait. The man on the ID looks so much like the boy in Jiyong’s old photos. His giddy excitement from earlier fades, souring with the specter of old memories. Choi Seunghyun stands in front of him and he’s 14 again: Jiyong’s complete failure at moving on from childhood trauma made flesh. He drops the ID and swallows. For a moment, tears threaten the edges of his vision. 

He has to try very hard to not hug, and then slap, Seunghyun then and there. After Jiyong moved away, forgetting Seunghyun—rather, failing to forget him—was how Jiyong spent most of his high school career. Everything he’s sublimated, everything he’s wanted to ask for years bubbles to his throat. 

What happened? Did you mean what you said? You promised you wouldn’t forget me, remember? Oh, and I blamed my trust issues on you for years, oops. He can’t say any of it, though, not with Seunghyun’s coworkers around him. 

“I almost didn’t recognize you. You’ve grown so much,” Jiyong says instead, laughing nervously behind his hand, a habit he’s never quite grown out of. 

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Seunghyun replies, frowning. 

Jiyong’s almost offended at being completely forgotten, but then remembers he’s probably unrecognizable in his makeup and wig. 

“I missed you. Don’t you remember me?” Jiyong asks with a sweet smile, laying a hand on Seunghyun’s arm. Okay, maybe he’s offended anyway. And maybe he’s being a little petty right now. It works, because the three people left turn slowly to Seunghyun with expressions ranging from bafflement to an obvious stifling of laughter.

“Uh—” Seunghyun’s frown, even deeper now, turns from the hand on his arm to Jiyong’s face. 

“I’m Jiyong. Kwon Jiyong, from middle school.”

Seunghyun’s eyes widen again for a moment. In that pause, Jiyong sees the 13 year old Seunghyun again, the shocked moment before Jiyong kisses him for the first time. It almost makes him want to kiss Seunghyun again. Then Seunghyun’s mouth falls open in pure amazement. 

“Jiyong…” he breathes, before bursting forward. 

Seunghyun hugs Jiyong, tightly, desperately, with Jiyong’s exhale shuddering out in response. His arms scramble up to encircle the wide breadth of Seunghyun’s back. Seunghyun smells faintly of sweat and old cologne as Jiyong shoves his face into the starched white coat of Seunghyun’s shoulder. Jiyong quakes—dizzy and so, so happy.

When Seunghyun finally pulls away, his eyes run over Jiyong’s entire body: down his nude torso, past the leather shorts and over his legs, pausing at the tattoos riding high on his thighs. Jiyong feels his face flushing hotly for the first time that evening.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” Seunghyun says, at length. “You look...um, well, you’ve changed.”

Jiyong laughs. “So have you,” he replies, eyeing him up and down, admiring the way Seunghyun fills out his scrubs. 

“I need to finish taking care of your...your friend,” Seunghyun says, turning away quickly as he notices Jiyong’s scrutiny. He glances at the nurse’s station, where everyone has, by now, thankfully dispersed to. “Would you mind staying here while I finish?”

“I’m his ride. I can’t go anywhere,” Jiyong says, shoving his shoulder playfully. 

Seunghyun stays quiet, taking the teasing with an awkward smile that makes Jiyong’s insides feel funny. 

“And can you get them to disconnect all this?” Jiyong asks, tugging at his IV and the wires hooking him up to a cardiac monitor on the wall. “I’m fine. Please don’t keep me here, Seunghyun.”

“Yes, of course,” Seunghyun says, simply.

“And where’s my bag and jacket? It’s vintage Chanel.” 

Seunghyun just reaches behind the stretcher and pulls up a hospital-issued plastic bag containing his clothes, his Gabrielle hobo, and the Louboutins he’s borrowing from his sister.

“You must think I’m a prostitute now,” Jiyong chuckles, covering his mouth as he takes the bag out of Seunghyun’s hands. He ducks his head, tucking back the blonde hair of his wig as it falls across his face. He feels the weight of Seunghyun’s eyes on him. “I promise I don’t always look like this.”

“You look fine. You like you stepped out of a dream,” is all Seunghyun says in response. He turns away, his white coat whirling behind him as he leaves.


	2. Chapter 2

_1998_

Jiyong is coming back home from school with a bunch of his friends when he runs into Seunghyun at the subway near his apartment. There’s nothing about Seunghyun that stands out, except for the stack of vinyl tucked under his elbow as he hustles towards the station. The only album Jiyong’s able to see is _Life After Death_, which immediately makes him come to a full stop and stare.

The rest of the group stops and turns, trying to follow Jiyong’s line of sight. “What is it?” 

“Did you see what he was holding?” Jiyong replies, his face lighting up.

“Who?”

“Him!” Jiyong points to the boy, who looks his age. He’s wearing a nondescript, oversized grey hoodie, though the rest of them have just gotten out of school and are still wearing uniforms.

“That’s Seunghyun,” laughs Jiyong’s friend, Joon-Ho. 

Jiyong whips his head around. “How do you know?”

“He, uh, goes to our school? Sometimes?”

But Jiyong’s already running towards Seunghyun, his friends temporarily forgotten. “Hey! Hey, Seunghyun!”

The boy stops and looks around, before noticing Jiyong running towards him, waving his arms. 

“Hey! What are you holding? Is that Biggie?”

“Do you...do you listen to rap?” Seunghyun asks, eyes flitting over to Jiyong’s broadly grinning face before looking away quickly.

“What else do you have there? I don’t have a lot of friends who like this music. Why are you carrying records? Do you know how to play them?”

Seunghyun doesn’t say anything, just holds out the records for Jiyong to examine. He grabs them excitedly, flipping through each one. “Wow, you have Wu-Tang. They’re my favorite group.”

“My uncle has a turntable he’s giving me. It sounds better on vinyl so...” Seunghyun’s voice trails off. “Um, I actually have to get going...” 

“Oh, yea, here you go,” Jiyong hands Seunghyun the records. “I’m Jiyong, by the way. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I got so excited when I saw you.” 

“I know who you are,” Seunghyun says, eyebrows creased in confusion. Then he clears his throat and stands a little straighter. “But, Jiyong, if you like this too you should come by sometime. I have a lot at home.”

“Wow,” is all Jiyong can think to say. He just has a couple of CDs, but they were hard to come by and expensive. He wondered if Seunghyun only collected vinyl, because he would love to borrow some from Seunghyun’s collection, if he really did have so many. 

He watches as Seunghyun disappears into the station, pausing briefly to wave goodbye at Jiyong. It’s not until then that he realizes he doesn’t even know where Seunghyun lives, and he’s never seen him at school. 

When he gets back to his friends, they’re waiting by the park for him.

“Took you long enough,” Joon-ho complains. “You’re lucky we waited.”

“He seems really cool,” Jiyong muses, ignoring them completely. “But he said he knows me already. Isn’t that weird?”

“Of course he does...we go to the same school,” someone else says with a derisive laugh. “We have for like, ever.”

“Er, I guess I never noticed,” Jiyong concedes, trying to remember ever seeing Seunghyun and failing. 

“You didn’t notice, like, the fattest kid in school?” scoffs Sungmin.

“I just didn’t, okay?” Jiyong counters defensively, grabbing the soccer ball out of Sungmin’s hands. “But he likes Biggie and Wu-Tang, so he’s already cooler than you guys.”

His friends laugh at him and shove him playfully, knocking the ball out of his hands. At the park, they run towards the great, green field where they play soccer almost every afternoon. They drop their backpacks, Choi Seunghyun forgotten already.

—

By the time Seunghyun heads back to the ortho touchdown room, it’s nearly the end of his on call shift. He spent far longer on the consult in the emergency department than he intended. When he sees Lee Chaerin, who is sharing overnight call with him, he almost cringes. She’s a good friend, but more importantly, is also the chief resident.

Thankfully, she doesn’t comment on how long he’s been gone. She’s busy glaring at the computer screen while scrolling through an MRI of a foot with one hand and nursing a styrofoam cup of instant ramyeon with the other. She doesn’t look over as he takes a seat beside her and badges into the computer terminal. 

About ten minutes pass in silence, interspersed with the sounds of Seunghyun typing away at his consult note and Chaerin slurping her noodles. Finally, she tosses the empty cup into the bin across the room and glances at him. He, very pointedly, does not look at her, but keeps staring straight ahead at the computer screen as he saves his note. 

“Well, now I know what took you so long,” she says, and turns back towards her computer. “PACU paged me by accident and said Dr. Kim’s patient had questions, so you might wanna change out of that before you go upstairs.”

He glances down at himself, only now realizing that one shoulder of his white coat was smeared with lipstick and foundation. “Oh, fuck.”

“Do I even want to know?”

“The hand trauma in the ER. The family member was someone I knew.”

“It looks like you got to ‘know her’ pretty well, alright.”

“He,” Seunghyun corrects. He takes the stethoscope and pens out of his white coat and heads over to the rack by the door for a temporary coat to steal. “It’s a he, and you’re actually not that off-base.”

He takes the least rumpled, size XL coat off the wall and sniffs it warily before sliding it on. Chaerin’s eyes slide back towards him and she has a devilish smile on her face. 

“Holy shit. I wasn’t serious, but I can’t even be mad. I’m just glad you’re not a sexless alien after all.”

“What’s wrong with being a sexless alien?”

“Stop deflecting,” Chaerin says, rolling her eyes at Seunghyun’s teasing. “On a guy like you that would just be a waste, as I’m always being told by every other woman in this hospital.”

Though he and Chaerin aren’t friends outside work, by virtue of being surgical residents, that still meant they spent most of their time together. And of all the people in the hospital, she probably knows him the best. She is also, not coincidentally, someone who could keep a secret. As a result, Chaerin is one of the few people in his life, at all, who knows he’s actually gay. He brings a hand up to where he can almost feel the ghosting sensation of Jiyong’s resting on his neck. 

“Oh no, I was only joking.” Chaerin says, after a moment of telling silence. She rubs her hands over her eyes. “God I just hope you were discrete.”

“I didn’t have sex with him right _now_," he scoffs, incredulous. "Do you think I would actually do something like that? I meant I knew him once. He was my first.” 

He walks over to the window to watch dawn break over the horizon. Seeing Jiyong again has made him feel oddly reflective. How many sunrises like this will he experience through the narrow windows of a cramped hospital office?

“Your first? You mean—oh, Seunghyun,” Chaerin sighs. “Do we need alcohol for this story? It’ll have to wait til our shift is over. Is 7AM a bad time to get drunk?”

“It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” He closes his eyes, feeling very tired now. “But he was my first kiss. We lost our virginities to each other. Then he moved away when he got to high school.” 

“Wait, how old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“Is that important? Anyway, he was in the emergency room. He even fainted and that was when we recognized each other.” He turns away from the window and heads toward the door. He’d better see his post op patient before the hand trauma rolls into the OR. 

“Maybe it’s fate that you reconnected.” Chaerin gets up too, examining her patient list. “Did you get his number?”

“He came with his boyfriend, Chaerin.” He holds the door open for her. “The patient is his boyfriend.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, they were all over each other in the ER.” He tries to push the image of Jiyong curled around another man out of his mind, because they’re nothing to each other now, and it’s been over 11 years since they last spoke. 

“Maybe they’re just really good friends. Did you check his chart? I’m sure it’s in the social history somewhere if the patient is openly homosexual.”

“It’s not. I checked.”

“Seriously? They didn’t get a full history?” Chaerin almost sounds offended at the idea of incomplete charting. “And you didn’t either? Choi, you truly have no game.” 

She’s not wrong, so he stays silent. They climb the stairs slowly, with the drain of having worked for nearly 24 hours straight. 

“Is the surgery starting soon? Park is on call for hand, right?” 

“Yea. 6 AM. Jiyong even made me give him Park’s number,” Seunghyun chuckles. 

“Jiyong? That’s the patient?” 

“No, the patient is Dong. Dong Youngbae.” He takes the list out of his pocket and squints at his illegible handwriting from earlier that night. “Jiyong is, well—” How can you put into words the relationship he and Jiyong had when they were teenagers?

“—Your ex. So your ex asked for your number.”

“Park’s number. He asked me to send him Dr. Park’s number so he can ask him questions directly.” He crushes an urge to check his phone to see if Jiyong texted him back after he sent the contact information to him.

“And you just gave it to him…” she continues, ignoring him.

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Besides Park killing you when he finds out you gave out his personal number, it took eight months for the chief to get yours when you were an intern. And now you just give it out to some patient’s family member on sight, no questions asked? Yea, that totally sounds like the Seunghyun I know.” 

He doesn’t answer. They get to the 10th floor—PACU—and he pauses before he opens the door. “I can stay and finish the case. Jiyong’s already expecting me to scrub in anyway.” He rubs his hand, the one Jiyong clenched before asking, imploringly, if Seunghyun will be the one to operate. 

“Ah, Jiyong again. The ex. He must’ve left an impression. I’d like to meet him…he sounds memorable.”

“Can you call it being exes when you were only in 9th grade?”

“Jesus, Choi, you really were having sex by 9th grade? I feel this has been a very illuminating morning.”

Seunghyun bites his tongue. As close as he is to Chaerin, he doesn’t actually want her knowing everything about him and his history with Jiyong. As it is, unless he ends up with Park clinic duties somehow, he’ll likely never see Dong Youngbae or Jiyong ever again after today. Considering every time Seunghyun closes his eyes he still sees the afterimage of Jiyong’s smiling face, it’s probably for the best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They were young because I tried to keep their early friendship as close-to-canon as I could, chronologically. In lieu of the particulars of their own history, I have in this chapter substituted that of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (I couldn't help it).


End file.
